One day after Stephen Paddock gunned down a crowd of concertgoers in Las Vegas, Tennessee deputies found a man carrying a substantial cache of weapons that included two submachine guns and 900 rounds of ammunition.
Scott Edmisten, 43, of Johnson City, Tenn., was pulled over for speeding Monday when police found a .357-caliber Magnum, a loaded .45-caliber semi-automatic, a .223-caliber fully automatic assault rifle, a .308-caliber fully automatic assault rifle, more than 900 rounds of ammunition and survival equipment in his car, Washington County Sheriff Ed Graybeal told the Associated Press.
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Edmisten allegedly threatened an officer when he was arrested and lunged toward investigators as they were questioning him. He is being jailed without bond on charges of possessing prohibited weapons, speeding and felony evading arrest.
The automatic weapons police found aren’t registered and the serial numbers had been removed, so Graybeal asked the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to help investigate the case. Edmisten had also modified the AR rifles to fire automatically, he told The Johnson City Press.
“Anytime you have several firearms and several hundred rounds of ammunition in a vehicle, that always causes a concern,” Michael Knight, an ATF spokesman, told AP.
Knight said investigators are working to trace where Edmisten’s weapons came from. “Our priority is reducing violent crime on the front end, so that’s the other thing we’re looking at, along with motive: Were these items going to be used for a criminal act or were they just being transported from one area to another area?”
Edmisten’s arrest came just one day after Paddock killed at least 59 people and injured hundreds more after he fired from the 23rd floor of Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Like Edmisten, some of the 23 guns found in Paddock’s hotel room were equipped with “bump stock” devices that allow for continuous fire.
Despite the eerie nature of such large weaponry stocks being found one day apart, Knight said they “don’t see a connection” between Edmisten’s arrest and Sunday’s mass attack.
“It’s not connected to any of the other national incidents, but timing obviously was a concern,” Knight said.
